ful little thing. We shall continue to enjoy
him just as he is. No--he's quite beautiful. He sees everything. He
isn't a bit ashamed. He has every scrap of the courage of it that one
could ask. Only think what he MIGHT do. One wants really--for fear of
some accident--to keep him in view. At this very moment perhaps what
mayn't he be up to? I've had my disappointments--the poor things are
never really safe; or only at least when you have them under your eye.
One can never completely trust them. One's uneasy, and I think that's
why I most miss him now."

She had wound up with a laugh of enjoyment over her embroidery of her
idea--an enjoyment that her face communicated to Strether, who almost
wished none the less at this moment that she would let poor Waymarsh
alone. HE knew more or less what she meant; but the fact wasn't a
reason for her not pretending to Waymarsh that he didn't. It was
craven of him perhaps, but he would, for the high amenity of the
occasion, have liked Waymarsh not to be so sure of his wit. Her
recognition of it gave him away and, before she had done with him or
with that article, would give him worse. What was he, all the same, to
do? He looked across the box at his friend; their eyes met; something
queer and stiff, something that bore on the situation but that it was
better not to touch, passed in silence between them. Well, the effect
of it for Strether was an abrupt reaction, a final impatience of his
own tendency to temporise. Where was that taking him anyway? It was
one of the quiet instants that sometimes settle more matters than the
outbreaks dear to the historic muse. The only qualification of the
quietness was the synthetic "Oh hang it!" into which Strether's share
of the silence soundlessly flowered. It represented, this mute
ejaculation, a final impulse to burn his ships. These ships, to the
historic muse, may seem of course mere cockles, but when he presently
spoke to Miss Gostrey it was with the sense at least of applying the
torch. "Is it then a conspiracy?"

"Between the two young men? Well, I don't pretend to be a seer or a
prophetess," she presently replied; "but if I'm simply a woman of sense
he's working for you to-night. I don't quite know how--but it's in my
bones." And she looked at him at last as if, little material as she
yet gave him, he'd really understand. "For an opinion THAT'S my
opinion. He makes you out too well not to."

"Not to work for me t